Recently, the geologist Kevin Pogue asked Walla Walla winemaker Doug Frost if he could think of a red wine from any place on the planet that one would know exactly where it came from without even tasting it. It was sort of a trick question: Pogue is the Pacific Northwest’s premier specialist in geography and soil terroir, who writes most of the region’s applications for new AVAs. And he was asking this question of Frost, one of only three people alive who’s both a Master Sommelier and Master of Wine. Frost was wary. “There are always outliers,” he said. “Always wines that go against type.” Except for those from one region, shot back Pogue: The Rocks District of Milton-Freewater, the Oregon appellation on the southern end of the Walla Walla Valley.
The Rocks’ soils are composed almost entirely of cobblestones, some as big as your fist, some as big as your head. Frost couldn’t argue with that: aromatically speaking, Rocks wines are remarkably consistent, even if you try to work against their tendencies, as he had in past vintages. “The Rocks don’t care about your intentions,” Frost admitted to Pogue. “They are what they are.”
There’s a reason why the region got its name.
Just put a glass of Rocks Syrah under your nose and decide for yourself. Rocks Syrahs have an aromatic signature at once exotic and hauntingly savory: fig, plum, blackberry, woodsmoke, smoldering peat, pork fat, bacon, olive, tapenade, lavender, white pepper, hoisin, crude oil, scotch, tar, leather, latex, drying blood—I could go on, and I often do. At a recent presentation I remarked that the sauvage bits, what most refer to as the Rocks “funk”, wouldn’t be out of place in a sadist’s pantry. In fact aromatically these might be the wildest, most out there wines in the world for Rhône varieties—way more than the Rhône Valley, Barossa and the McLaren Vale, the Gimblett Gravels in New Zealand, Swartland, and, really, anywhere else. Read the full article»
